[HLUG] Open Source Schools Project

[Sarah Chard]

Hi All
just a quick update on the schools project

HLUG members visited Fownhope Primary yesterday - following our
experiences at Clehonger school with various non-working CD drives and
boot issues we made a pre-school visit on the Tuesday to talk to the
Head about the project have a look at the equipment in school and test
Tuxedu on a few machines.
We have decided that in the school environment it is easier to run
Tuxedu from USB sticks and duly tested these on the Tuesday on a number
of  laptops - we also (having gained permission from the School's ICT
tech and Head) loaded a full install on two of the schools laptops for
teachers to test.
We returned to the school yesterday with a full timetable of classes
from year 5 to reception throughout the day.

We started the day with year 5 and worked down through the classes, the
children were great, receptive and enthusiastic and loved Tuxedu. The
teachers were also very interested in what we were doing and all the
staff on the day said that they could see themselves using Tuxedu.
We stayed on after school finished to help the ICT co-ordinator run the
computer club with a mixed age group of children.

Two highlights of the day for me was firstly Kevin's demo to small
groups of year 5 students on how to use StopMotion with a web cam he had
brought with him. They promptly went back to their laptops started up
StopMotion which opened the webcams in the newer laptops and they began
making their own films. The teacher was amazed as she had not realised
there were usable webcams in the laptops. And secondly a child with some
learning difficulties who was delighted with a program in gcompris that
he could use and succeed at, the teacher said it was the first time he
had been fully engaged in a program.

The  school faces a number of obstacles as far as ICT teaching goes
which the staff are all too aware of as they have to deal with them on a
daily basis, they have no dedicated ICT suite, they have a limited
number of laptops (enough for one class) all running XP , half of them
have no batteries so can only be run if attached to the mains and the
hard drives on these are not in the best of health, there are only 2
electrical points per classroom (it's an old building) and teachers
cannot give each child in a class a laptop and get them to log into the
network as it cannot take 30 log-ons at once. 
They  have no budget for spare equipment although they are hoping to get
the network issues resolved.

Like most primary teachers Staff are not ICT specialists so knowledge
levels vary widely but they are keen to make use of the equipment they
have.
Tuxedu was well received for a number of reasons - it's free which is
great for the school budget, if offers a number of programs the teachers
liked and felt they could make use of, tuxmath, tuxtyping and tuxpaint
were all popular with teachers, and because of network issues at the
school the ability to get the laptops up and running quickly and the
children actually using them without half the lesson being lost  was a
big plus. The ICT co-ordinator and Head are also keen to get parents
involved so we will be discussing how to do this with the school once
they have had time to explore Tuxedu a little more - 

One of HLUG's members (thank you very much Geoff) has kindly made a
donation of £30 to the Tuxedu/schools project which we will use to buy
USB sticks that we can use in schools running Tuxedu live - we are using
various sticks loaned by members (mainly Kevin) at the minute and really
need more for schools with big classes.
So if you are a parent please mention the project to your school and if
you know of any software suitable for inclusion in Tuxedu let Tony know.
Please keep testing Tuxedu - it's downloadable from
http://www.tuxedu.org.uk/ 


-- 
Sarah
Schools Project - http://piratepad.net/V3NK9CQWNt